


take my hand & make a shadow

by napoleons



Category: Throne of Glass Series - Sarah J. Maas
Genre: F/M, Slow Burn, Spies & Secret Agents
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-06
Updated: 2017-10-06
Packaged: 2019-01-09 14:02:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12278046
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/napoleons/pseuds/napoleons
Summary: modern spies au. a rescue mission goes wrong, and elide lochan is faced with finding her way through hostile territory without adequate field agent training. luckily (depending on your point of view) she won't be going alone.





	take my hand & make a shadow

**Author's Note:**

> damn, i don't even know. i just wrote this solidly in like four hours because i have a lot of feelings about empire of storms & this is how i cope with them. it's a bit of a mess, but it'll tie together when i'm feelin more coherent and in charge of my emooootions. let me know what you think!!
> 
> p.s. life is too short to proofread. tell me about typos!!

Two months. That’s her best guess, at least. Two months she’s been locked in this fucking cell, hobbled to the stone wall, living some kind of medieval nightmare.

It’s hard to judge how much time has passed when she hasn’t seen natural daylight for at least one of those months. She’d taken to marking days on the wall with a piece of flint, tallying up the meals – if the slop that scraped under the cell door could be called that – until she’d been hauled out for interrogation and the guards had confiscated it.

Like she’d be able to do much damage against an M15 with a little slither of rock.

Elide tucks her swollen, marred legs into her chest and rests her back up against the damp stone. She’ll have to come up with another way of monitoring time – she’d started counting seconds, minutes, hours, but it definitely hasn’t done her mental state a great deal of good – or she might just go mad.

She’s still counting – sixty, one hundred twenty, one hundred eighty – when she hears a far off pop. And another. She pushes herself up off the wall and shimmies forwards, crawls unashamedly on her hands and knees to press her ear up against the metal door that holds her in.

( _And_ , whispers a treacherous little voice in her ear, _keeps out all kinds of nasties._ )

She shakes the thought. Listens harder. There are more muffled pops, and they are getting closer and closer with every passing second. The tap of hobnailed boots on stone floors. She shuffles back now, that little whisper in the back of her head getting louder and louder. She’s sitting in the corner on her damn ass when the old door flies back so hard it nearly wrenches off its hinges.

A dry, choked sound that might be a sob fills her ears. It’s not until Manon Blackbeak is crouching down in front of her that she realises she’s the one that made it.

‘We don’t have much time,’ she’s vaguely aware that Manon is talking to her – telling her something – giving her instructions, ‘we had the benefit of surprise, but this area isn’t going to stay clear for long.’

Manon is fumbling – she is never clumsy, never fumbles – with the shackles on Elide’s ankles, until she sighs, growls almost, in frustration, and takes careful aim with her rifle. Elide squeezes her eyes closed. Tries to ignore the single tear that slips down her cheek from the action. It leaves a track of white against her dirty, browned skin that Manon won’t notice until later.

The shot cleaves the shackles in two – they are still bound round her ankles but at least now she can move, maybe run. Though not very fast with her bare feet and splintered shin. Manon slings her rifle over her shoulder and hauls Elide up.

‘The fuck is this place?’ Elide has never seen her colleague look like this before. Her face paled until it’s almost as white as her hair, which is braided and tucked away for stealth, but Elide can picture it very clearly. Has pictured it many times while she’s been rotting away in the cell they are quickly – but still too damn slowly, her piece of crap leg – leaving behind.

Elide doesn’t – can’t – respond. Her breath is coming in quick, rasping pants. She’d been running to start with but her pace is slowing, transmuting into more of a hobble than anything else.

But they’re almost clear; bursting out into the sunlight. Elide squints in the brightness, only moving because Manon is tugging so insistently at her hand. She pulls her over the side of the building, and lets go of her to look for their escape root – the gentle thud of Chinook propellers slowly approaching. Manon’s shoulders are terribly tight. It’s too slow. She casts a hurried look back towards Elide, who seems to be calculating the height from the rooftop into the water below. Scanning for rocks, for debris, judging the depth of the water from the different shades of blue.

The building is an old defensive fort – European, most likely, from the design of the balustrade – and here come its defendants, spilling like ants out of the doorway. It’s a bottleneck. Manon wouldn’t choose this roof for no reason. It’s a bottleneck, but there are still numerous armed guards, and only Manon. Elide is unarmed – untrained – useless. Her stomach feels like a dead weight. Her leg is burning enough that the pain sends most of her rational thought down the gutter like rainwater.

Manon is surrounded. She’s screaming something.

Something like ‘go, Elide, _go_ ,’ like maybe she’d seen her analysing the jump off the building. Analysing was all someone like Elide was good for, after all. She edges closer to the handrail, dragging her aching limb. A lame dog. _Useless_. Helpless. Pathetic. 

‘Elide!’ there’s more frustration in Manon’s voice than anything like a plea.

There are roughly three guns pointed at Elide now – three faces blank and ruthless behind their tactical gear. She looks around for Manon, at the helicopter still in the distance, and jumps.

 

*

 

How the girl hadn’t drowned is beyond him. Those iron chains on her feet; the bruises spread like dark ink across her skin; the state of her left leg. He should’ve left her on the riverbank.

Whatever compelled him to pull her out of the water was nothing conscious.

He’ll pick the lock on those shackles, he thinks, hauling her over his shoulder and trying very carefully not to think about the wet scraps of fabric that had barely covered her, her little feet bumping against the small of his back with every step, he’ll pick the locks and warm her up and figure out where the fuck she came from.

Up river was Morath – and unless there were multiple other psychopaths living in the woods who’d chain up little girls like this one – then she must have come from there.

An escapee from _Morath;_ it’s so fortuitous that it’s actually laughable.

 

*

 

Elide wakes up to darkness – but she has woken up to darkness for the past eight weeks. There is nothing noteworthy about that. Manon must have been a dream.

Except she is not lying on flagstones, in fact, she’s pretty sure that there is a root digging uncomfortably into her back. And out of the corner of her eye she can see the faint orange light of _embers_. She tips her head around slightly to get a better view. And there’s a body. A large one. She holds her breath and counts sixty slow, solemn seconds. A large body that is fast asleep.

She takes her time sitting up. It’s a slow, calculated manoeuvre that she’s developed perfectly after months of desperately trying to be invisible.

Her stomach drops, and it’s only that infamous Lochan restraint that keeps her from gasping. She knows that face – can tell who it belongs to even in the dark, by the light of a dying fire.

Lorcan Salvaterre. She pictures his file on her desk, the edges of it curled and coffee stained, the pictures paper clipped to the back. The terrible things he’s done. She’d gathered all this intelligence for Manon months ago, on Lorcan, on Maeve, on countless other members of their international crime ring. He should be _far_ from here, if her intelligence had been correct (and it always was) though she more so than anyone knows how much can change in the span of a few months.

It’s not a hard decision then, to leave. The hard decision is choosing not to take a weapon. They are all too close to his hulking, sleeping form to risk it. Who knows how easy it is to wake an infamous sharpshooting soldier like Lorcan Salvaterre? Elide does not want to test it.

 

*

 

Manon won’t be far behind, she thinks as she traipses clumsily through the woods, far enough away now to have thrown caution aside for impatience. _Manon_. Her heart stutters. If she’d made it out alive, that is.

There’s a small, stubborn part of Elide that insists that even surrounded by Erawan’s grunts Manon wouldn’t give in. She’d sooner rip out throats with her bare teeth than be beaten.

She’s smiling slightly to herself when she hears it. The treacherous voice in her head whispers _up, up, up,_ and she considers it for half a second, but even uninjured it’d take her too long to scale up the side of one of these ancient trees. She’d never been one for climbing trees, even as a kid she’d been sweet, soft, coddled.

 

Snapping twigs, regimented footsteps, low murmurs, a faint mechanical clicking – she hasn’t been in the field long, but it’s long enough to know what those sounds mean.

She’s frozen in place, watching the lights on the scopes of their rifles sweep closer and closer to her feet when something solid slams into her out of no-where, presses her back against the bark of an ancient pine so hard that she can feel the skin of her back tearing through the thin cotton covering it. All her breath leaves her in one solid swoop, until all she’s aware of is the large body surrounding her, her chest pressing up against his with every gasping breath she takes. He’s looking at her like he wants to kill her. Impossibly dark eyes, tapered to a terrifying point. Elide lowers her gaze.

It’s as if she hasn’t complied with the unspoken order he’d tried to give, and his hand closes over her mouth. (Maybe she’d cringe at the dirt worn into the cracked skin of his knuckles if she wasn’t so filthy herself.) She’s still panting, quick puffs of hot air through her nose. She watches as the hairs on the back of his hand stick straight up.

He saves her from the monsters; she makes a calculated decision.

 

*

 

‘I won’t go back there, if that’s what you’re trying to suggest,’ she doesn’t know where this sudden ferocity has come from, standing there with her fingers curled so hard into her hips that they’ll probably leave bruises.

Can’t comprehend how she can stand in front of this hulking brute and not want to break down in tears. Perhaps going a little bit crazy is good for mental fortitude.

He sighs, but there is nothing downcast about him. He is not a large man who is conscious of it – he is unapologetic, straight shoulders, rolled back, not a hint of slouching in sight. Elide can’t help but mimic the posture, though she’s certain it looks rather less intimidating on her.

‘I’m not asking you to go _back_ ,’ he’s close to rolling his eyes – and if he does she’ll be compelled to throw something at him, a rock, perhaps – ‘just tell me about the layout, the weaknesses, the strong points.’

Elide might not be strong, or fast, but she’s _clever_. Her face falls, her eyes practically sparkle with unshed tears that are all the more visible now that dawn is rising, and she casts a longing look out to the morning sun, pink and fresh and new.

‘Help me get to the border and I’ll tell you everything I know,’ her voice cracks, her mouth wobbles. He doesn’t need to know that _everything_ consists of a five-minute dash out of a cell, being tugged along by someone who knew the layout far better than she did.

He sighs again, a man easily frustrated, she can tell. But he agrees. ‘Call me Lorcan,’ he tells her.

‘I’m Marion,’ she doesn’t know why it feels so pertinent to tell him this.

 

*

 

Her limp is slowing them down far too much. He casts sidelong glances at her ruined leg until she catches him at it, and the look of utter abhorrence dissuades him from doing so again.

It’s only because he needs to deliver her to the border before he can get back to Morath that they stop in the village. If the sight of such a filthy couple disturbs any of the occupants they don’t bother to show it.

‘We were hiking,’ Lorcan explains half-heartedly when a shop owner slides her eyes over to Marion, loitering nervously by the door in her tattered clothes, ‘she has terrible balance.’

Marion gets changed into the new clothes he’d bought her in the ladies fitting room.

‘You can’t look so uneasy,’ he tells her through the velvet curtain, ‘it looks very suspicious.’

What he doesn’t expect is this: she comes out in her new pants, the sleeves of her sweater rolled up the elbow, smiling very softly as she slips her hands around his arm, leans most of her weight on him. To hide the limp. Lorcan can’t help but be impressed.

‘Thank you, love,’ she says, just a shade too loudly, then directs her attention towards the woman behind the counter, ‘I keep telling him he needs to improve his reflexes,’ she grins, too much of a wolf in it for it to be truly sheepish, ‘so he can catch me next time.’

 

*

 

He’s bought castile soap and medical supplies and they walk for three hours before they find a suitable water source. Elide can only describe it as a fairy pool – circular grey stones covered in moss, a wide, gentle waterfall for them to wash under.

She shucks her new clothes, folds them carefully, and wades into the pool. The water comes up to her bellybutton, and she can’t turn around for fear of how little of _him_ the shallow water will cover.

‘I’ll stand watch,’ he says, the sound low in his throat, and she’s grateful that he has some common decency, at least. The sound of his footsteps recede into the distance and Elide scrubs the dirt out of her hair, off of her tender skin. She’s pale and smells of peppermint and can’t seem the scrub the smile from her face, no matter how hard she tries. At least it fits into the persona she’s crafted, to be so pleased.

She calls for Lorcan once she is safely back in her sweater, her hair dripping wet. She is not as considerate as he had been.

Elide sits facing away until she can hear the crunching of rocks under his feet stop. She should definitely _not_ look. It’s a good tactical decision though, right, to analyse the strengths and weaknesses of your enemy? Even if that enemy happens to be an ally, for now.

When it’s done, she wishes she hadn’t looked. Wishes she could erase the image from her mind. Of his back, of those sculpted muscles working under scarred skin.

 

*

 

He teaches her to build a fire. Makes her hobble around to look for kindling. Perhaps to remind himself that he is not kind, or forgiving, or in any way concerned for this girl except to garner intelligence.

They crouch together by the fire pit he’d dug for cover, and he directs her hands, tries not to flinch when the tips of her fingers accidentally brush up against his palm.

They roast the rabbit he’d caught over the fire and eat it with burnt fingers.

‘This is positively medieval,’ she says, laughing, and when he looks at her with his face set in stone he feels something in the very bottom of his stomach go loose. Lorcan grits his teeth. It’s been too long since he’s been in civilised company, is all. Since he’s had someone pretty to laugh with, someone who curves in all the right places to look at, someone who looks at him like _that._

He patches up her leg the best he can, too. It’s taking too long for them to cover short distances with her wounded. He tries not to bristle as he rolls her pants up, his fingers skimming over the raw skin. Perhaps he didn’t do a good job of maintaining his characteristic stoicism, because one of her tiny, tiny hands hovers over his shoulder, rests there so lightly that if he couldn’t see it he’d have thought he’d imagined it.

‘Eating rabbit isn’t the only barbaric thing that’s happened to me recently,’ her voice is very quiet. He concentrates on wrapping her ankle tight enough to help. ‘You’ll give them hell for me, right?’

Lorcan is silent, simmering. He nods his head and her hand tightens round his shoulder.

 

*

 

It’s not as though she’s sick of sleeping in the dirt… but she’s sick of sleeping in the dirt.

‘Please,’ she says, for the twentieth time, ‘we’ve come far enough that they won’t be looking for me anymore. If I wake up with spiders in my hair one more time I think I’ll die,’ and maybe it’s her melodramatic, wide-eyed imploring that does it, but they end up in the last room in a cheap hotel two towns later.

The pipes groan and rattle when they turn the hot water tap on, the linoleum floor has the kind of semi-sticky feeling that couldn’t even be bleached out and the bed is small and springy, but she still tips her head back against the pillows and _moans_ when she falls onto it. Lorcan averts his eyes too quickly for it to be casual.

‘Paradise,’ she sighs, and both his eyebrows twitch upwards as he stares out of the window.

‘You’re easily pleased,’ and if she wasn’t dreaming – was that a faint hint of amusement she detected in his voice?

Elide rolls onto her front, props her chin up in her palms and stares.

‘Why don’t you come over here and find out?’ she purrs, then cackles at his horrified expression. ‘I’m going to go tell the front desk we’re on our honeymoon. Let’s see if we can’t get some free champagne up in here.’

 

*

 

He can’t get the image of her on that bed out of his head. Can’t stop thinking about the way she’d said it, so low, so husky. She’d only been joking. He braces a hand on the dirty tiles on the wall, lets the shower run over his shoulders until the water turns cold.

 

*

 

They do get free champagne. And Elide orders enough room service to feed a small squadron of soldiers – and does an impressive job demolishing a good amount of it.

She watches mindless television while Lorcan is absent, probably scoping things out on the roof. Can almost imagine that she’s not on the run in hostile territory; or that her best friend in the world might be dead.

The champagne was cheap, tart stuff that made the insides of her cheeks pucker, but she’s feeling fairly relaxed now because of it.

Relaxed enough so that when Lorcan comes through the door and says, ‘I’ll take the floor,’ in that gruff, manly way she’d been imagining for the past few hours she only laughs.

‘Don’t be stupid,’ she watches him as he looks at her fingers spreading in wide arcs over the bed sheets, wonders if he’s imagining something else, ‘it’s the twenty first century. We can share a bed without anything happening.’

Nothing happens. He lies as still as a frightened animal, all careful breathing and restraint, until she falls into an aching, dreamless sleep.

 

*

 

Lorcan wakes with the first light, as he always does. He’s dozing, half asleep still, pulling her closer and closer, his nose in her hair, his hands on her hips, her elbow. _Wait_ , his arms full of _Marion._ The whole of him goes stiff. He extracts himself very carefully, barely risking taking a breath, so that when he’s pulled himself free and closed the bathroom door gently behind him he’s practically panting. This time the shower starts cold.

 

*

 

They’re practically at the border – can hear the cars in the distance, the slight shriek of old brakes and slamming doors. Practically at the border and they’ve spoken about Morath maybe three times.

Perhaps he’ll stay with her a bit longer. Wean some more information out of her that way.

They’re walking so close that her arm brushes against his with every other step. He’s so distracted, his chin tipping down towards her, the high points of her cheeks turning redder and redder, that he doesn’t notice the woman with the white hair levelling her rifle at him from the tree until she dangles her legs down and drawls, lazily, ‘you led me on quite the merry chase, Elide.’

Lorcan doesn’t think as he throws the girl behind him – doesn’t think that it’s suspicious that there’s no one with them called _Elide._ Doesn’t notice his hunting dagger being removed from his tactical belt.

‘Lower your weapon,’ he growls, reaching for the gun holstered at his side.

He never gets there.

There’s a blunt pain blooming in his head and he’s vaguely aware of an approving cackle, of Marion’s gentle, freckled face in front of him. She’s stroking the hair away from his face. ‘I’m sorry,’ he thinks she says, and he reaches up towards her, to take her chin in his fingers, to tilt her mouth towards his.

He never gets there, either. His vision is filled with that white-haired bitch, the wide, shit-eating smile on her face, as she slams the butt of her rifle into his head, and everything goes dark.


End file.
